


Saving Some and Tossing the Rest

by LostOzian



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canon Compliant, Earth C, Family Fluff, Ironic Mother's Day, Making someone's day, Misunderstandings and Communication, Mother-Son Relationship, Other, kinda :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-25 20:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17128463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostOzian/pseuds/LostOzian
Summary: Roxy makes a blunder that bothers her and Dave helps her out.





	Saving Some and Tossing the Rest

**Author's Note:**

> This work is a gift to Tumblr user thecheesecakepie - happy Secret Santa!

tipsyGnostalgic [TG] is now pestering turntechGodhead [TG]

TG: helloooooo  
TG: earth c to davey  
TG: u have been giving me idle messages for three days and counting now  
TG: do we need to organize a rescue?  
TG: are you dead?  
TG: because if youre dead there’s supposed to be like big letters that say DEAD or something  
TG: just gonna hover up above your body so that everyone passing by knows hoooooly fuck, this dude is way dead, and we don’t even have to check him or anything  
TG: hes so dead the universe had to announce it  
TG: fuckin rude of you to die and not even send a save the date  
TG: uuuuuuuuuuuugh dave plz  
TG: what  
TG: oh so im yelling my head off at you all worried and shit and you just say ‘what’?  
TG: I mean it serves as proof of life doesn’t it  
TG: in the barest terms possible, shit man where have you been?   
TG: birthday  
TG: your birthday was five days ago  
TG: no see  
TG: troll kingdom is fucking insane  
TG: like alternia was a shithole and the condesce was the worst and rose deduced they had a first guardian actively making everything hyperviolent and terrible for everyone  
TG: but when it comes to intense passions trolls are just  
TG: like that  
TG: if they get their head in the game you are gonna have no game left to play once they’re through with it  
TG: so this is related to your radio silence becaaaause…?  
TG: jade kicks it off with her birthday  
TG: huge fucking party the kingdom over  
TG: and since my birthday is two days later they wont stop in the middle to kick it off again they just keep going  
TG: you or rose don’t live in troll kingdom but youre mythological figures too so theres no incentive to start cleaning up on the 4th  
TG: honor to kanaya the mother of the species and her lawfully wedded god wife  
TG: and by the time you’ve kept up the party engine for four fucking days straight it just doesn’t slow down  
TG: eighteen wheeler party truck has to shift through the gears before it can slam on the brakes  
TG: so that’s your reason why you have been gone for a grand total of eight days  
TG: yup  
TG: and you were sober for all of it, yeah? I don’t wanna be a downer about it but you’ve got my genes too  
TG: don’t make my mistakes kid  
TG: nah soporifics are shit, not touching those  
TG: but food and music and shows and dancing and presents and worshipful parades fill the space  
TG: and I also got roped into helping Karkat clean up after cuz hes a fucking goody double shoe guy  
TG: not too bad but I had to help him direct everyone else so thats why  
TG: what’s up  
TG: okay I wasn’t planning to ask about this but I need to at least VISIT troll kingdom next year  
TG: would that be cool  
TG: hell fucking yes well save a seat for you  
TG: sweet  
TG: so what was the thing you’ve been waiting three days to ask me  
TG: oh shit yeah  
TG: about that  
TG: heeeeere goes  
TG: you ever get that feeling that you did something, and it was kind of okay at the time, and then the longer you have to think about it the worse and worse you feel about it until youre convinced that you fucked everything up?  
TG: whats wrong  
TG: so like you said, rose and I had a bday in there too  
TG: and we didn’t have a weeklong rager but the carapaces were really nice and happy for us  
TG: we got some janey-cake and a parade and all that it was great  
TG: and for the last two years rose and I have had fun giving gifts cuz like what do you get the gal that has everything?  
TG: you get self-indulgent bullshit and just go crazy having fun  
TG: but I think I fucked up this time  
TG: how  
TG: I got us this set of matching mugs  
TG: like overdecorated works of ceramic mastery in the true chess person aesthetic  
TG: and they said “world’s best mom” on the side  
TG: tacky as fuck amazing  
TG: I thought so!  
TG: but rose froze up  
TG: she smiled and thanked me but I know it bothered her  
TG: I was hoping to get some davespective on this but you were gone because you were off doing the party rock  
TG: so I just sat here on the problem letting it get bigger and bigger…  
TG: got it  
TG: so  
TG: first things first  
TG: rose will never hate you  
TG: youd need to transform into a condesce level asshole overnight for her to think youre anything but hot mom shit  
TG: hot mom shit lmao  
TG: shut up im helping  
TG: so on the mugs how ironic were they  
TG: irony is a you-and-dirk thing really…  
TG: you thought tacky mugs were a great gift this is at least fourteen percent ironic  
TG: i think rose is reading into things that aren’t there and that’s why she froze  
TG: but I wanna know what you were trying to say versus what you were pretending to say so we can figure out what rose heard  
TG: uh  
TG: I was trying to say I love you?  
TG: I know about rose and her mom and all the neglecty mixed signals and how hard it was for her to trust her mom loved her  
TG: but I thought this would be a funny way to acknowledge our weird bond thing!  
TG: hey lookit us two mutual moms having a mom fest loving each other and having our happily ever after with alien girlfriends and ruling a rad gold-puple chess kingdom  
TG: hey random question  
TG: yeah  
TG: do you actually call each other mom  
TG: oh  
TG: fuck  
TG: bingo  
TG: look rose loves you and she loved her mom and mom probably would have loved rose back if her bloodstream wasn’t sixty percent gin  
TG: my two boonbit explanation is that as much as rose wants a mom she doesn’t want to copy-paste the bad shit on top of you so shes trying to make sure she doesn’t think of you as her mom  
TG: make sense?  
TG: yeaaaaaaaaah…  
TG: good because im done explaining it  
TG: :(  
TG: what  
TG: I know this is all a nice explanation or the fact that I did not fuck up 4 ever and that’s kinda reassuring  
TG: its just still sad?  
TG: why  
TG: i like thinking of rose as my mom, at least a little  
TG: and I like being a mom to other people  
TG: the person they come to for help who makes shit better and loves them  
TG: youre also describing a superhero right now  
TG: the both of us could have different ideas of what mom is like  
TG: cant really fault rose or me for that  
TG: and maybe I got it in my head, like you know how sometimes rose and dirk will do that father-daughter schtick?   
TG: now that I think on it more I think they just do that as like galaxy brain verbal sarcasm duels not to be affectionate  
TG: so I should have known better  
TG: hey  
TG: I think you should talk to rose about this just so she knows where you’re coming from and why this is a big deal to you  
TG: I can sit here and spin all you want about how this is just an innocent misunderstanding but rose should be the one who tells you what she wants  
TG: my guess is shed feel bad that youre feeling bad about a present that made her feel bad and now youre just brewing up hurricane lalonde  
TG: lol  
TG: or what about this  
TG: a lalondenado  
TG: cyclolonde  
TG: shit that’s good  
TG: anyway I need to go talk to rose before I lose all of my courage  
TG: thanks dave  
TG: anytime that’s not the first week of december

tipsyGnostalgic [TG] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG]

 

* * *

 

Roxy took Dave’s shove and turned it into a push for Rose, asking about the present and why she didn’t like it. As it turned out, Dave had been basically right about everything. Rose had her own uncertainties about the kind of relationship she wanted to have with Roxy in the long-term, and getting an outright statement gift like that had put her on the spot. They reconciled with big hugs, the last slices of leftover birthday cake, and a marathon of wizard movies that Jake had certified were top-notch, which of course meant they were terrible. They live-mocked the movies and laughed until they cried and then went to bed happy.

Well, mostly happy.

Roxy had a bunch of deep thoughts following her in the days after. She wanted to have a strong connection to Rose, duh. That didn’t fully explain the mom stuff. What mothering did Rose need that Roxy could provide? Did Roxy need anything from her in return? What function did parental relationships serve anymore? Was it just that Roxy wanted to be appreciated more, or appreciated in a different way?

She voiced some of this to Callie, while they were painting their nails together. Callie had such steady artist’s hands, and even if Roxy couldn’t match Callie’s manicure skills, she liked turning the tips of her skeleton claws bright pink.

“I’m not positive that I have any better advice for you, darling,” Callie said. “The concept of familial relationships are alien to me as well, further complicated by your paradox clone origins. When I think about it, the problem feels grander too. ”

“How grand? Hundred grand?” Roxy dipped the brush again and smoothed it over the tip of Callie’s finger, the Ring of Life safe and sound near her skeletal knuckle.

Callie giggled. “Not quite that grand, and very pedestrian compared to the grandness of the adventure that brought you here! I was just thinking that the question at hand is along the lines of, how much of the old worlds do you want to replicate, versus how much do you want to toss out?”

“We can’t toss out the concept of moms,” Roxy said. “Besides, we still got humans that reproduce all pregnant-style.”

“Well, motherhood will never go away. I don’t even think I’m explaining this properly…” Callie frowned a little, looking down at her gradually pink-ening claws.

“Omg, I can’t believe we found something that _the_ Callie can’t explain to us,” Roxy teased. “You did such a good job explaining all that other shit to us, about our titles and how he game was going to work.”

“Those were the areas of my expertise! Right now, I am quite out of my depth. The most I say is, whenever you feel like you need to talk about this, I can absolutely listen.”

“Dear, sweet, beautiful, sweat, precious Calllie…” Roxy finished one hand and then threaded her fingers with Callie’s. “Thank you.”  
  
After a conversation like that, the problem was nearly out of mind. She only remembered it about two weeks later, when she and Callie made a visit to Troll Kingdom. Twelfth Perigees had some festivals with it—none as insane as the godly birthday rager week—and as the largest cultural event of the season, Callie would sooner pop her resurrection ring off her finger than miss it. Plus, Roxy loved seeing Jade’s greenhouses, marveling at Karkat’s bureaucracy den as he managed current events in the kingdom, and for a blind girl, Terezi was surprisingly good at Nintendoes.

They arrived the night before most festivities just to hang out, and spent the night in the big Troll Kingdom palace. It felt pretty familiar to the one the Carapaces built, but with more organic spiky bits. Callie planned to wake up early the next morning to get some light cosplay ready (though what Callie intended as ‘light’ might still be pretty fucking elaborate) and Roxy would sleep in.

Except someone knocked on the door.

“Mmghghf?” she said.

“Hey,” Dave said. “Can I come in?”

The hell… but why not? “Sure.”

Roxy twisted about until she was mostly approximately on her back, looking toward the door. Dave nudged it open and showed Roxy that he was carrying a tray. A tray with food on it. And a little vase with one spiky troll-flower in it.

“The fuck is this?” Roxy grunted at him.

“Mother’s day,” Dave answered.

She blinked hard and managed to sit up. “Wait, what?”

“Mother’s day,” he repeated, moving over closer to her bed. The tray had some funny legs on it so it could stand on the bed over Roxy’s legs. “This is the most authentic reproduction of Mother’s Day commercials possible, starting with some fucking breakfast in bed. There’s pancakes, toast, eggs, AJ, and a card I made.”

When Dave sat down the tray, Roxy could see the card, its construction paper form unable to bear the weight of the macaroni glued to its front. With a grin on her face and laughter seeping into her voice, Roxy asked, “I am going to need so much more context for all of this, what am I even looking at? You made a macaroni card?”

“Yeah,” Dave sat down near the foot of the bed and pointed. “That little macaroni-man is me, and then that one there is you, and the big one in the middle is Barack Obama.”

“Why is Barack Obama on my mother’s day card?”

“I can’t believe you just asked me that. It should be obvious.”  
  
Roxy laughed again. “Rights, totes obvs, the last American president before apocalypse is necessary for every single mother’s day card, forevermore.”

“See, you get it, why were you pretending you didn’t?” Dave said. “And I have a present for you.”

“The hell, you already made breakfast and a card and now there’s a present?! This is unfair!” Roxy protested while she speared some of the pancake on a fork and put it in her mouth. Honestly, a very mediocre pancake, but her paradox-son had made it himself so she’d gladly eat it.

“Yep. Incoming.” Dave didn’t even have to move, and from his sylladex, a thick disk the size of a hubcap appeared in mid-air above the other side of the bed. When gravity took hold and it thumped down on the other side of the mattress, it nearly jettisoned Roxy and her breakfast out of the bed. Plates clattered dramatically and some of the apple juice sloshed.

“Oh my fucking god what is that?” Roxy demanded.

“Open it,” Dave told her. 

The heavy disk had some very sloppy paper wrapped around it. Roxy recognized Alternian letters from a reused newspaper, and when she reached out to tear it away, she felt four layers of it. Dave had an atrocious strategy for wrapping presents. The newsprint was a pretty homely touch if Roxy said so herself, which was probably why Dave decided to do the shittiest wrapping job possible.

Under the paper, Roxy’s fingers touched poured concrete. In utter confusion, she pulled more of the paper aside until she could see some imprints on the surface: A, V, and something that looked kind of like a handprint?

“Whaaaat in the hell is this?” Roxy asked. The whole thing was just a giant slab with Dave’s name and presumably his handprint.

“So once upon a time, kids would put their handprints on stone for their moms,” Dave explained.

“…Why?” 

Dave shrugged.

“Also, this is huge,” Roxy said. “Why is it so huge?”

“Usually little babies make these handprint stones,” Dave answered. “I made it big so that Jade could shrink it down, but it looked fucking weird. Baby handprints and big handprints have different proportions that I didn’t realize until it was shrunk.”

“So you went with the biggie table version just because the little hand freaked you out? What if you had just went all the way and shrank it down to like, a coaster, and then the handprint would be even tinier than a wiggler-babe’s and there’d be nothing uncanny about it?”  
  
Dave paused for a second, and then looked down at the breakfast tray. “…How the hell did we not think of that?" 

Roxy laughed again, and then picked up her breakfast to get it out of the path of her impending hug to Dave. She wrapped him tight around the shoulders and just… held him. Even after all this time, she still loved how solid and warm other people were, on top of the joy that Dave had gone so far to make her feel welcome, wanted, loved…

“This is perfect,” she told him. “Thank you so much.”

“Cool,” Dave replied, and Roxy snorted. He was probably butting up against his limit for sincere emotional expression in just that morning alone. Still, it made her all the happier that Dave had chosen to spend it on her.

Someone knocked at the door again, so they ended their hug and turned to look. Karkat nudged his head inside and frowned at Dave. “Hey, you left all your dishes in the sink.”  
  
“I’ll do them when we get back,” Dave said.

“No, you won’t,” Karkat insisted. “Callie’s going to be ready soon, so just get the hideously filthy ones done until she’s ready and then we’ll go?”

Dave groaned, but stood up from the bed and plodded out of the door, sparing only a small hand-touch for Karkat as he passed. Roxy moved her breakfast back over her lap with intent to chow down. She didn’t want to be the reason they didn’t leave when Callie was ready.

“So you liked all of this?” Karkat asked, gesturing around at the food, card, and giant rock. 

“It was stupid and endearing all at once, so yes,” Roxy answered.

“Thank fuck, he was so nervous about it but I had no idea how to advise him on account of never having a biological predecessor responsible for my care.”

Roxy was going to say something more about how Karkat’s ‘oh look at me I’m an alien’ excuse wouldn’t hold up much longer, but then he spoke up again. “So, if Dave is looking to build this kind of bond with you, that means you’re someone I’ll need to speak with if I intend to hold a permanent quadranting ceremony with him?”  
  
She nearly dropped her fork. “Hoshit—you wanna pop the question!?”

“No! Shut up! Fuck you!” Karkat blustered. “I was just talking to Kanaya and she said she talked to you beforehand because of Rose and that there was a lot of protocol—”

Roxy bust out laughing again, and then waved Karkat away. “Don’t have an aneurism! If you wanna talk we can talk later!”

Thankful for the excuse to escape, Karkat grumbled more about something else that needed to get done before they left, so he departed the room and left Roxy alone with her mother’s day presents.

_I think this is enough…_ Roxy smiled to herself with another bite of mediocre pancake made by someone excellent. _Replicate this, toss out the rest. Just enough motherhood to make me happy._


End file.
